The present invention relates to a novel composition comprising a penem or carbapenem antibiotic in association with an amino acid derivative. The invention also provides a method of treating bacterial infections by administering to the patient, simultaneously or sequentially, a penem or carbapenem antibiotic and at least one amino acid derivative selected from a class of acylated amino acids.
The class of compounds known as "penem and carbapenem antibiotics" is, of course, very well known and is potentially of great value for the treatment of bacterial infections. Although, as a group, these penem and carbapenem antibiotics exhibit excellent anti-bacterial activity and a variety of other properties which render them highly suitable for pharmaceutical use, they do have a number of disadvantages. One of the problems of these antibiotics is that, in general, they exhibit a degree of renal toxicity, and some degree of kidney damage is a frequent side effect of their use; accordingly, such penem and carbapenem antibiotics should not be used for the treatment of patients with actual or suspected impaired renal function. As a result, the penem and carbapenem antibiotics cannot be used for many patients for whom otherwise they would be the antibiotic of choice. The problem of renal toxicity is particularly acute when the antibiotics are administered by intravenous or intrasmuscular injection in a high dose.
We have now surprisingly discovered that the concurrent, or effectively concurrent, administration, with the penem or carbapenem antibiotic, of one or more of a certain class of acylated amino acid derivatives significanty reduces this renal toxicity.
EP Publication No. 7614 discloses the use of a dipeptidase inhibitor in association with antibiotics similar to those to which the present invention relates. However, the dipeptidase inhibitors employed are structurally different from the amino acid derivatives of the present invention and are employed for a totally different purpose. The amino acid derivatives employed in the present invention possess little or no dipeptidase inhibitory activity.